standing on a broken field
by Marie Vulffe
Summary: -Ser Ilyn is to have my head, should Stannis win this night.- All it takes is the breath to speak, and nothing is ever the same again. Blackwater AU.
1. white crippled wings

So I thought I'd try my hand at ASOIAF. I only recently finished book four, and I am so _enthralled _that I wish this stuff came in intravenous form and I could get an IV drip for it. Not to mention a subscription to HBO.

This is an **AU for the Blackwater Battle** scene – I think this is a prerequisite for every Sansan lover out there, so I'm just adding my voice to the mix. I actually have a storyline for this, one that diverges greatly from the books, but I don't know if I'll actually get any of it down. For now, just take it as is: in all its unbeta'd, caffeine-and-sleep-deprivation-induced glory. Lyrics are from Poets of the Fall, "War."

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><p><em>Do you remember standing on a broken field;<br>White crippled wings beating the sky?  
>The harbingers of war with their nature revealed,<br>And our chances flowing by._

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><p><em>I have no wish to die.<em>

He laughs at her, as she knew he would. _Everyone dies, girl. Be it man, woman, child or little bird, everyone dies._

His breath is hot on her skin as she holds her hand there, trembling, up against his scars. _I know._ _Ser Ilyn is to have my head, should Stannis win this night._

That stops him. She does not know why she has told him this, except that she feels he should know before he takes leave of her. She feels the flex of muscles in his jaw as it tightens, but he says not a word.

_The hour grows late. If you are to go, you must hurry. _

In the dying light of the wildfire, his eyes burn, the only part of him she can see clearly. Even that small piece of him is nearly overwhelming. She feels him touch her again, taking hold of the hand that cradles his face in the darkness. Callused fingers chafe against her skin as they weave through her own. _You think to be rid of me so easily, is that it, girl? Think I can just up and walk out after you tell me these things? _The raw depth of his voice is, as ever, at odds with the gentleness in his touch.

Her brow furrows in quiet confusion. _I have no wish to be rid of you. But you are going._

Those strong fingers dig into her palm then, squeezing. He laughs once more, and the sound is wretched and hollow. A place in her throat, just underneath that nonexistent wound where his blade had rested mere moments ago, tightens in sympathy. _Am I?_

That little knot of fear residing in her belly loosens a little. _Are you?_ She hears herself murmur, and her fingers curl into his, nails rasping softly against the twisted flesh of his cheek. He inhales sharply at the gesture, and dips his head so that his mouth is pressed into her palm. She cannot tell whose hand it is that is shaking; if the tremors she feels all the way down her arm are her own, or his. Her fingers slowly unfurl once more so that she is cradling his face again, feeling the scratch of his scarred mouth as it moves across her open hand. Wetness slips through her fingers and down her wrist; it is not blood that he sheds now.

Before she can stop herself her other hand reaches out and slides across his jaw, smoothing its way up his face, feeling her way in the dark. She can feel the tension in the set of his jaw, the tightness around his eyes as they fall closed. His hand drops away as her own small, soft ones sweep across him, thumbs smoothing out the furrows in his brow, the crows' feet that gather above his cheekbones. Tears and blood and soot cling to her skin, sticky and damp, but she pays no mind to it. His head remains bowed, his breathing ragged and hoarse, the only sound in the darkness of her room.

He leans into her embrace, and she _feels _the fight leave him, gone between one breath and the next. With it flies the last of her lingering fears, and it is easy, so laughably easy, to look up into the shadows where his face lies, and speak truth.

_I cannot leave._

_I know._

_I wish you would stay._

He does.

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><p>He waits by the door, longsword across his knees and a hand on the hilt, baring an inch or two of steel. She thinks that perhaps she will not sleep, but as she lies shivering atop her blankets, eyes wide and unseeing, she hears him stand and move near, and then something settles across her. She plucks at the edges, drawing the once-white cloak around her, breathing in the scent of it. Sansa feels her eyes fall shut of their own volition, the tang of fire and blood and sickness and <em>him <em>comforting her in a way that incense from the Sept never could. She drifts away, finally overcome.

She does not comprehend that she is awake until she realizes what has woken her; the singing of steel being unsheathed vibrates through the still room. The girl bolts upright, the cloak pooling around her waist with the movement. She can barely make out his silhouette across the room where he is standing – sword in hand, a few feet to the inside of the door, where no one will see him should they open it. The room is just now lightening; the wildfire has all but died, and the glow that just touches the skyline is a natural one. Dawn is near.

Fear takes hold, and she opens her mouth to ask what is happening, but even as the words form in her throat the door is thrown open and a figure steps in.

In the space between one stuttering heartbeat and the next the fear is exchanged for violent, aching relief. As Ser Dontos stumbles his way into the room the Hound steps into the shadow of the open door, blade at the ready, making not a sound.

The fool is so drunk that he takes no notice of his impending doom, instead reaching for Sansa. She is plucked from her bedding and spun 'round and 'round, him laughing all the while. Sputtering, she questions him, and his answer is so incredible that for a minute she forgets the Hound entirely, gaping and gasping and trying to remember how to breathe.

It is not until Dontos sweeps her up into another giddy embrace that she looks over his shoulder, only to catch the Hound's eye as he ducks around the open doorway, about to take his leave. Something nameless passes between them then, and she thinks that perhaps she should go to him, say something,_ anything_. But the world does not stop long enough for her to decide; the moment is lost like all the others, and she buries her face into her Florian's padded shoulder.

When she looks back up, the Hound is gone.

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><p><em>Fin(?)<em>


	2. to ivory to steel

I have no idea where this came from. In any case, enjoy, and keep in mind that this is –wildly – AU. And watch out so you don't trip over the obnoxiously prevalent symbolism that is this chapter.

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><p><em>interstice.<em>

Everything is as it was before. And yet, everything has changed.

The fear lingers, but not of _him_. It is fear of Joffrey – oh, yes, she has learned, but she will never, ever love him – fear of the Queen and her poisoned honey, fear for her own sanity. Waking each morning is a task, another duty, and she dons her armor even as she threads ribbons through her hair and picks through her dresses, wondering which one will best suit her captors' tastes today. All are ill-fitting, and none of them up to current fashion, as befits her station. Her title is little more than a jape now, but she cannot forget where it is she has come from. She cannot afford to; it is what stands between her and the enemy.

A maid she may still be, but no Maiden; they took that from her as they took so many other things. Broken into too many pieces, and put back together with inept, fumbling hands so that the edges show in jagged, brazen lines. So she takes up the mantle of the Smith, casting her iron into the fire and refining the ore her enemies have so kindly mined and handed over to her.

They are little things, injustices spilled as freely as wine at a wedding, but she gathers every scrap to her and builds. It covers the broken lines adequately. This armor she has forged was sparked in the heart of the North, on her mother's knee, her septa's side, her father's table. Here in the heat of the lion's den she is able to cast it, and polish it until nothing is left but a glowing, surreal reflection.

This is her armor, her sword, her shield. It is everything she hides behind and defends herself with; she has no real advantage on this field, so her only choice is to fall back, to parry each blow as it comes. At the end of each day she is left with throbbing back and arms and shoulders, as if she had truly been wielding a blade all through her waking hours. Her neck is stiff from keeping it still and bent; her knees quake beneath her shortened skirts, where no one can see. But she can feel each tremor as it comes, leaving behind a sick ache that cannot be comforted by heated stones or hot wash cloths. She no longer cries at night; they dried up some time ago, leaving her parched and gasping and alone, just like everyone else.

But every day she slips back into it, just like the day before, and all the ones before that. Sabaton and greaves for when she trips and falls over her own words, and pays the price for her momentary lapse. Vambraces for her upraised arms as they rain the blows upon her. Up to the reverbrace and pauldrons, so that she may better shoulder her family's sins. And she must not forget the breastplate – her heart is still so very tender, even if her skin is slowly making its transition into sterner stuff. Gauntlets keep her knuckles protected, if she should ever care to sink to their level, to fight dirty. That day is not here yet, but it looms ever nearer, and she clenches one little fist, watching the steel-wrought bones strain beneath ivory skin.

Her back she cannot protect, not on her own; it is the hardest part to reach, and she has no squire. Her knight, her Florian is more a jape than her own name, and in any regard, the songs are all lies. There are no real heroes, just as there are no dragons. They say that once the Great Hall was filled with their bones, but she has never laid eyes on them.

The only other one she dares trust still comes to heel at the King's command, even if it is only for show. He is as well-trained and resilient as she, but all the same she has seen him bleed, seen him weep and break and fall short of himself. She cannot look on him the way she did before; once her eyes were opened, they could not fall shut again. That night lies between them now; a strange, subtle thing that shifts every time she looks back on it, something new emerging with each recollection.

There yawns the chasm that birth and status and _living_ have wrought, and this new, unsure footing she finds herself on keeps tipping her over in his direction. She teeters, there at the brink, knowing that there is something she is meant to do. But she is a young girl still, and there is no mother to show her the way. That feeling is there when she meets his eyes from over her Florian's shoulder, and every time thereafter. Something in them she recognizes, past the maelstrom of rage and fear, which calls back the moment he had taken the blade from her throat, and sat so still beneath her hands. He had fought endlessly and earnestly against the rising tide, but knew all along the current was meant to pull him under.

So she finds that the plating at her back is an ill-fitted piece, faded and dented and scratched from too much use and too little regard. She only prays she can afford the upkeep, now that it is in her care.

Her shield, her ever-present humility, is at the ready, waiting to be brandished. If ever their words should hit their mark, she has it to buffer the blow. And her sword, her own words, ready to defend and entreat and meet whatever lies waiting for her outside her door. _Words are wind_, but wind is breath and breath is life, and she clings to them as such. Has she not seen the smallest of sighs bring a man to tears?

Finally she dons her helm, her mask. From behind it she watches, and waits for her opponent to finally falter. Until then she smiles and sighs and mouths with myriad subtleties, and every blow dodged feels like a battle won. But she does not celebrate. At the end of the day she is left to limp back to her darkened chambers, the taste of victory bitter as she licks what wounds she was dealt. When the sun rises she will simply have to begin all over again. It is all she can do.

But in the dark she can still dream, and she dreams of the day she can finally stand, one foot on Joffrey's chest, her visor lifted so that he may look upon her true face. And she will laugh and laugh, her sword at his throat, and then she will strike the blow herself. And then there will be no more words. Only cold, Northern steel.

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><p>Next up: something might actually happen!<p>

Also: there's a Paul Laurence Dunbar quote in there somewhere. Ferret it out for me, will you?


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